from the Listening Hills (Ss) (2004) (14 page)

"Me, I just stood there...I never figured nothing like that. I sure thought they was wrong, but both them boys, they knowed a sight more about women than ever I would.

"Lisha, he rides off to town, and he ain't gone an hour afore he comes back and then Ellie, she and Marge comes a-running, and with them is Betts Warner, Lisha's girl. Marge, she just stopped, took one look, and then run to me and went to crying in my arms.

"We made her a triple weddin' just two days later, but folks heerd about it, and one morning Lisha come to the door for his horse and Dick Watson, his brother and four-five friends, they shot him down. Shot him down with him only getting one shot off.

"Betts, she come a-running to warn us, thinking of us even when her heart was gone within her, her man laying dead back there full of Watson lead.

""Saddle up,' I says to Johnny, "I'll be coming back soon.' Me, I buckled on my guns.

""I'm goin' with you,' Johnny says, and I told him no. He'd have to git us packed and ready. Marge, she just looked at me strange and soft and proud. She says, "You go along, Boone, I'll saddle up for you, and I'll be a-waiting here when you get back.'

"Never a mite of complaining, never a word again it. She was a man's woman, that one, and she knowed my way was to ride for the man who fetched this trouble down upon us.

"It was bright noonday when I fetched up to town. I swung down from the saddle and I asked old Jake. "You go along,' I said, "and you tell that Dick Watson I'm here to put him down.'

"Standin' there, I wondered if it was I'd never have me a home, or see the light in my baby's eyes, or see the sunlight on the green corn growing, or smell the hay from my own meadows. Them things was all I ever wanted, all I ever fixed to have, and now it seemed like all my life I toted a gun, shooting and being shot at.

"All I ever wanted in this here world was a bit of land and peace, the way man was meant to live. Not with no gun in his hand a-killing folks.

"I seen Dick Watson step from a door down the way, I seen him start, and I pulled down my hat and stepped out, stepped out and started walking to kill a man.

"Then Watson stopped and I looked across the forty paces at him and I made my voice strong in the street. "Dick Watson, you brung hell to my family. You was sore because that black mare beat your horse! You lied about us stealing! You made us into outlaws and caused my brothers to be kilt and some other men too. It'll be on your conscience whether you live or die.'

"He stood there staring at me like he'd looked right in the face of death, and then he slapped leather. His gun came up and I shot him, low down in the belly where they die slow and hard. God forgive me, but I done it with hate in my heart. And then...I should have knowed he'd framed it, a half dozen of his friends stepped out and opened up on me.

"Son, what come over me then I don't know. I guess I went sort of crazy. When I seen them all around me, I just tore loose and went to shooting. I went up on the porch after them, I followed one up the stairs and into his room. I chased another and shot him running, and then I loaded up and turned my back on both the dead and the living and I walked down that street to my horse. I was halfway home before I knowed I'd a bullet in me.

"When I was patched up some we rode on and Betts went back to her folks, a widow almost afore she was a wife. We fetched up, final, in the Blue Mountains of Utah, and there we built us a double cabin and we ketched wild horses and hunted desert honey, just the two boys of us left from the five we'd been. We lived there and for months we was happy.

"Your Ma was the finest ever, Son. I never knowed what it could be like to live with no woman, nor to have her there, always knowing how I felt inside when nobody had ever knowed before. We walked together and talked together and day by day the running and shooting seemed farther and farther away.

"Johnny was happy, too. Them days his mouth organ laughed and cried and sang sweet songs to the low moon and the high sun, and he played the corn out of the ground and the good sweet melons. We hunted some and we lived quiet-like and happy. How long? Three months, five months...and then Marge comes to me and says Ellie's got to go where she can have a doc. She's to have a baby and something, she's sure, ain't right about it.

"We knowed what it meant, but life must go on, Son, and you were to be born and I aimed to give you what start I could. The same for Johnny. So we gathered our horses and we rode out to Salt Lake with the girls. We sold our horses for cash money to some Mormons, and then we drifted north. The girls had to stay with the Doc awhile, so we got us a riding job each.

"One day a gent comes into a bar where we was with a star on him and he sees me setting by the window. Marge's time is coming nigh and we're all a-waiting like. This man with the star he comes over and drops into a chair near Johnny and me. "Mighty hot day!' he says. "Too hot to hunt outlaws, especially,' he says, "when they size up like good, God-fearin' folks.

""I got me a paper says them Tremaynes is hereabouts. I'm to hunt 'em up an' arrest 'em, what do you boys think about that?'

""We reckon,' Johnny says, very quiet, "them Tremaynes never bothered nobody if they was let alone.'

"He nods his head. "I heard that, too,' he says, "Leastways, if they've been in town they sure been mighty quiet an' well-behaved folks. Worst of it is,' he got up, wiping the sweat-band of his hat, "I took an oath to do my duty. Now, the way I figure that doesn't mean I have to go r'arin' out in the heat of the day. But come sundown,' he spoke slow and careful, "I'm gonna hunt them Tremaynes up.'

"That sheriff, Son, he looked up at Johnny and then over at me. "I got two sons,' he said quietly, "and if the Tremaynes left family in this town, they'd be protected as long as me and my sons lived.'

"We didn't take long about saying goodbye, although we never knowed it was our last. We never guessed we was riding out of town and right to our death.

"It was fifty miles east that we passed a gent on the trail. We never knowed him but he turned an' looked after us. And that done, he hightailed it to the nearest town and before day a posse was in the saddle.

"At noon, from a high ridge, we drawed up and looked back. We seen four separate dust clouds. Johnny, he looked at me and grinned. "I reckon we ain't in no hurry no more,' he said, "they got us again' the mountains.' He looked up at them twelve, and thirteen thousand foot peaks. "I wonder if any man ever went through up there?'

""We can give her a try,' I said quiet. "Not much else we can do.'

""Horses are shot, Boone,' he replies, "I ain't goin' to kill no good horse for those lousy coyotes back yonder.' So we got down and walked, our saddle-bags loose and rifles in our hands.

"Then we heard them on the trail behind and we drawed off and slipped our saddles from the horses and cached them in the brush. Cow Hollow, Son, and that's where we made our stand. We had a plenty of ammunition, and we weren't wasteful, making shots count. We hunkered down among the rocks and trees and stood them off.

"Morning left us and the noon, and the high hot sun bloomed in the sky, but it was late fall, and as the afternoon drew on, a cold wind began to blow.

"They come then, they come like Injuns through the woods after us, and we opened up, and then suddenly Johnny was on his feet, he's got that old Winchester at his hip and he shoots and then he jumps right into them clubbing with his rifle. He went down, and I went over the rocks, both guns going, and that bunch broke and ran.

"I fetched Johnny back, and he lay there looking up at me. "Good old Boone!' he said. "Get the girls and get away. Go to Mexico, go somewheres, but get away!'

"He died like that, and I sat right there and cried. Then I covered him over gentle and I slipped out of Cow Hollow and started up the trail toward the high peaks.

"It was cold, mighty cold. The sun came up and touched those white peaks and ridges ahead of me, then the clouds covered her over and it began to snow. I walked on, and the snow stopped but the wind blew colder and colder. We was getting high up, I passed the timberline here on Tokewanna and crawled into this here place.

"Son, I can't see to write no more, and there ain't no more to say. I guess I didn't say it well, but there she is. You can read her and make up your own mind. This here I've addressed to your mother, care of that sheriff down there. I even got a stamp to put on so's it will be U. S. mail and no one'll dare open her up.

"Be a good boy, Son, love your Ma and do like she tells you. And carry the name of Tremayne with pride. It was honest blood, no matter what you hear from anyone."

He was stiff from the cold, but he rolled over carefully and folded the letter and tucked it into an envelope. On it he placed his stamp, and then scrawled the name of his wife, in care of the sheriff. From his throat he took a black handkerchief and fastened it to a stick so its flapping would draw attention. Near it, held down by a rock, he left the letter.

Then he crawled out and using his rifle as a crutch, got to his feet. He still had ammunition. He had no food. He discarded the almost empty canteen. For a long time he looked down the cold flank of the mountain into the dark fringe of trees. Far away among those trees flickered the ghostlike fingers of fire, where men warmed themselves and talked, or slept.

Something blurred his eyes. His head throbbed. Pain gnawed at his side and his leg was stiff. How long he stood there he did not know; swaying gently, not quite delirious and yet not quite rational. Then he turned slowly and looked up, two thousand feet, to the cold and icy peak, silver and magnificent in its solemn grandeur.

He stared for a long time, and then he began to climb. It was very slow, it was very hard. He pulled his old hat down, put the scarf lower around his ears. To the left there was a ridge, and beyond the ridge there would be a valley.

He climbed and then he slipped, lacerating his hands on the icy rocks. He got up, pushing himself on.

"Marge," he whispered, "Son..." He continued to move. Crawling...falling...standing...he felt the snow, felt his feet sink. He seemed to have enormously large feet, enormously heavy. "Never aimed to kill nobody," he said. He climbed on...wind stirred the icy bits of snow over the harsh flank of the mountain. He bowed his head, and when he turned his face from the wind he looked down and saw the fires below like tiny stars. How far he had come! How very far!

He turned, and looked up. There was the ridge, not far, not too far...and what was it he had thought just a moment ago? Beyond the ridge, there is always a valley.

-

The Moon of the Trees Broken by Snow

COLD BLEW THE winds along the canyon, moaning in the cedars, whining softly where the sagebrush grew. Their fire was small, and they huddled close, the firelight playing shadow games on the walls, the walls their grandfather's father built when he moved from the pit house atop the mesa to the great arch of the shallow cave.

"We must go," the boy said, "there is no more wood for burning, and the strength is gone from the earth. Our crops are thin, and when the snows have gone, the wild ones will come again, and they will kill us."

"It is so," his mother agreed. "One by one the others have left, and we are not enough to keep open the ditches that water our fields, nor defend against the wild ones."

"Where will we go?" Small Sister asked.

They avoided looking at each other, their eyes hollow with fear, for they knew not where to go. Drought lay heavy upon the land, and from north, south, east, and west others had come seeking, no place seeming better than another. Was it not better to die here, where they had lived?

The boy was gaunt for each day he hunted farther afield and each day found less to hunt. Small Sister and his mother gathered brush or looted timbers from abandoned dwellings to keep their fires alight.

The Old One stirred and mumbled. "In my sleep I saw them," he muttered, "strange men sitting upon strange beasts."

"He is old," their mother said. "His thoughts wander."

How old he was they did not know. He had come out of the desert and they cared for him. None knew what manner of man he was, but it was said he talked to gods, and they with him.

"Strange men," he said, "with robes that glisten."

"How many men?" The boy asked without curiosity but because he knew that to live, an old one must be listened to and questioned sometimes.

"Three," the Old One said, "no more."

Firelight flickered on the parchment of his ancient face. "Sitting upon beasts," he repeated.

Sitting upon? What manner of beast? And why sit upon them? The boy went to a corner for an old timber. A hundred years ago it had been a tree; then part of a roof; now it was fuel.

They must leave or die, and it was better to die while doing than sitting. There was no corn left in the storage place. Even the rats were gone.

"When the light comes," the boy said, "we will go."

"What of the Old One? His limbs are weak."

"So are we all," the boy said. "Let him walk as far as he may."

"They followed the path," the Old One said, "a path where there was no path. They went where the light was."

On the third day their water was gone, but the boy knew of a seep. At the foot of the rocks he dug into the sand. When the sand grew damp, they held it against their brows, liking its coolness. Water seeped into the hollow, and one by one they drank.